Astronomy and the Bible: Questions and Answers

Rating:
Summary: See other reviews to see what damage this stuff does
Review: Another reviewer rightly noted that this book and others like it contain faulty science that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. DeYoung's predictions about light passing through wormholes or that light has slowed down since the start of creation have all been discredited numerous times, mostly by other Christians (e.g., Hugh Ross). While I commend the author for including some real information about astronomy, the young earth theories promulgated in this book are simply wrong.

The trouble with books like this is that they convince non-Christians that the Bible really does teach the Earth is young - and therefore, false. This is evidenced by an atheist reviewer on this site, who's been wrongly convinced by creationists that the Bible teaches the earth is really 6K old and that mainstream evangelical theologians are trying to hoodwink us into overlooking the Bible's errors. (Why we'd be so dishonest as to "hoodwink" anybody, I don't know - maybe so we can more Republican voters. Who knows?) I'm willing to bet that most non-Christians who read books like this come away with conclusions like that reviewer; the Christians who read this book simply come away more fearful and resentful of real science.

When a few misguided people at my church brought in a young-earther from the ICR to teach us all about young-earthism, I challenged him to his face on scientific, literary, and Biblical grounds. This man - who debates preofessional scientists on college campuses - crumbled before my arguments, and I'm merely a layman with a degree in ENGLISH. I can imagine the harm he's doing to our faith out in the world.

Rating:
Summary: Contaminated Astronomy
Review: In a mailing-list flame war on creationism at MIT (of all places!) about eight years ago, I wrote (something like), "Anyone who knows anything about astronomy and has half a brain can figure out that creationism is false." Now why would I write such a thing? I was refering, of course, to young-universe creationism, the idea that the universe was created about 6000 years ago. Now, here we have an astronomy book which tries to argue that creationism is at least respectible, and *assumes* that the Bible is accurate.

This book does contain quite a bit of information on astronomy. As such, it could be a good introductory book. Unfortunately, the science is contaminated with creationist propaganda and superfluous Bible references. Only someone already knowledgeable in the field would be able to separate these tares from the wheat of science. I strongly recommend some other book on astronomy, preferably secular. "The Physical Universe" by Frank Shu, for example.

This book is better than "Starlight and Time" and "Tornado in a Junkyard," which I've already reviewed on Amazon.com. In "Starlight and Time," Russell Humphreys completely disregards all physical consequences of his white-hole theory. In "Tornado in a Junkyard," James Perloff distorts or disregards pretty much everything known in modern science. Here, Professor DeYoung gives plenty of accurate information, but also some distortions.

DeYoung does tell us about the immense distances involved in the universe. Our galaxy is about 100,000 light years across. The Andromeda galaxy, he says, is about 2.9 million light-years away. The large Magellanic Cloud, where Supernova 1987A occured, is about 180,000 light-years away. There are many many galaxies much farther away. The most distant objects, the quasars, are billions of light-years away.

The speed of light is one light-year per year. Since we can see things billions of light-years away, the universe must be billions of years old. So what's the problem?

The problem is that creationists come up with all sorts of crackpot theories to explain how we can see distant objects even with a young universe. DeYoung presents five such theories on pp. 89-90, including one detailed in "Starlight and Time." Four of them predict enormous physical phenomena that are absent in nature. The fifth theory is that God created the light while in transit when it created the universe 6000 years ago. That theory is a variant on "Last Thursdayism," the idea that we were created last Thursday with our memories completely intact and everything around us matching.

The two problems with the "Last Thursdayism" theory are that it's completely unverifiable and unfalsifiable, and it means that God committed an enormous fraud on us by creating massive evidence of a history that didn't occur. DeYoung tries to answer whether Supernova 1987A actually occured, under "Last Thursdayism." The obvious answer is no, because it would have occured long before the creation of the universe. God would have had to make the explosive light, the matching neutrinos, the light from the prior star that exploded (a blue supergiant), the light from the remains of the supernova, etc. in flight. But DeYoung makes a convoluted attempt to argue that the supernova actually did occur -- something to the effect that it happened in God's imagination, and God is truth, so it happened.

DeYoung tells us that many different estimations of the age of the universe give widely varying results, from thousands of years to billions of years. The problem is that the young-universe estimations have been thoroughly debunked. (See any typical anticreationist book, or www.talkorigins.org.) Those estimations have used absurd assumptions and have disregarded well-established basic science.

DeYoung believes that a "vapor canopy" of water existed above the atmosphere before the flood (p. 88). Genesis 1 states that God created a "firmament" in the sky, separating the waters above from the waters below. However, in the fourth day, when God created the sun, moon, and stars, God set them in the firmament. That means that the "vapor canopy" existed not only above the atmosphere, but beyond all the stars as well.

In fact, the world-view of Genesis 1 is either geocentric or flat-earth -- most likely flat-earth, because nothing in Genesis 1 portrays anything more than a "heaven above" and an "earth beneath." (Exodus 20:4) The sun and moon are small balls of light, and the stars are tiny points of light, which can fall to earth (Revelation 6:13). I've not seen anything in the Bible that unambiguously identifies a round earth. That includes Job 26:7, which DeYoung cites as indicating a round earth (p. 17). On the other hand, there are a few indications that the earth is flat: Isaiah 40: 22, Matthew 4: 8.

I agree with DeYoung, that the six days of Genesis 1 are literal days, contrary to the claims of Hugh Ross and others that days refer to ages or eons. Genesis 1 has day and night created before the sun, moon, and stars; and vegetation created before the sun. What this means is that the author of Genesis 1 didn't connect daylight with sunlight, and that Genesis 1 is simply wrong.

Contrary to DeYoung's claim on p. 17, "When the Bible touches on scientific subjects, it is entirely accurate," the Bible is frequently wrong. There is NO science in the Bible.

Rating:
Summary: Not Horrible, But Not Very Good Either
Review: This is one of the better books that come from the "Young Earth" perspective. Deyoung does not come across like a half-crazed nut like many of the others do in the young earth camp. At the same time, though, there is no Biblical or scientific evidence that the earth is young, so it is a perspective one must come to a priori. Still, this is not a book about proving the earth is young (you certainly could *not* do that with astronomy!), although he does try to do this in many parts of the book. Mostly, it is a book about astronomy for those who believe the earth is 10,000 years old or less, and want to more about the cosmos. The author does a good job on some points, but for the most part this book would probably be more harmful then good. I would instead suggest getting a copy of one of Hugh Ross' books. Hugh Ross is a noted astronomer that is well respected by both christians and secular scientists alike.